Jason

But it also was, like, completely defensible to me to eject Wemby in that situation because he, like, straight up, like, seemingly, like, made eye contact with his target and just came high with that elbow and hit Nas Reed right in the neck.

And so while I sympathize with the emotion of the moment because you're frustrated, you feel like you're getting fouled, and while I see how it could have potentially been called differently in terms of maybe being a flagrant one, we've seen some nasty stuff get ignored.

DeAndre Ayton threw a pretty nasty elbow in the last round that got turned into a flagrant one, right?

It was bad enough that it could have resulted in an ejection.

And that is where, as a growing up moment for Wemby, as a learning experience for Wemby, it's so important to this team that he's out there, that he can't afford to make decisions or make mistakes that run the risk of him getting ejected.

That's a risk that he can't afford.

There are a handful of guys in this league that are so incredibly important to their teams that they really can't win without them.

And Wemby's one of those guys.

In both of these games, this one and then the game where he ended up leaving early with the concussion kind of followed a similar flow where you saw the Spurs' depth of talent.

We're going to talk in a minute about how, like, you know, in this modern form of basketball, just having so many dudes who can create a play off the bounce is so valuable and it gives you a great chance to win every single night.

But ultimately, when a really good defense kind of tightens the screws on some really young guards –

And De'Aaron Fox, who's a very, very, very good player, but not a truly great player in this league, all of a sudden them having Anthony Edwards and you not,

becoming becomes a big problem and wimpy's the antidote for that situation and that's why specifically for victor it's a learning experience for him like i understand the frustration you're getting fouled a lot of stars in this league are getting fouled right now your team desperately needs you got to keep your emotions under control even when you're frustrated and for the record i think wimpy gets it i we're recording right after the final buzzer

So I'm not going to hear any sort of postgame quote, but I would be shocked if we didn't wake up tomorrow with a quote from Victor Wiminyama saying that he let his team down.

And I expect him fully to have learned his lesson from the situation.

He basically gave Minnesota a much easier opportunity to tie the series, and they did.

Digging into the basketball...

I was actually thinking throughout this game tonight about how much this game to me resembles what modern basketball looks like compared to what I was watching 10 years ago, 15, 20 years ago, and obviously previous eras that I wasn't even watching.

The increase in ball skill, meaning like just the amount of players who can make a pretty high level play with the basketball in their hands, like whether it's a dribble drive to the basket, a dribble drive into a counter, the ability to run ball screens in a sophisticated way, the ability to score from all three levels, like short range scoring and mid range scoring as well.

Like there's a such a ridiculous amount of skill on the floor in these games.